Studying Teacher Education

A journal of self-study of teacher education practices

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cste20

Care Ethics in Online Teaching

Colette Rabin

To cite this article: Colette Rabin (2021) Care Ethics in Online Teaching, Studying Teacher
Education, 17:1, 38-56, DOI: 10.1080/17425964.2021.1902801

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17425964.2021.1902801

Published online: 18 Mar 2021.

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STUDYING TEACHER EDUCATION
2021, VOL. 17, NO. 1, 38–56
https://doi.org/10.1080/17425964.2021.1902801

ARTICLE

Care Ethics in Online Teaching

Colette Rabin
San José State University, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

As a teacher educator, I sought to understand how to cultivate care Received 18 January 2021
ethics in my online teaching over a three-year period. Through Accepted 7 March 2021
surveys, student work, interviews, my course materials and teaching KEYWORDS
journal, and video-ed synchronous class sessions with seven Care ethics; online teaching;
cohorts of teacher candidates, the lenses of care ethics revealed self-study; teacher education
particular challenges and possibilities for care with authentic mod­
eling through story, practice and continuity, dialogue, and addres­
sing power and confirmation in assessment. The self-study process
helped me uncover my own assumptions to carve out better ways
to cultivate caring relationships in the distanced and disembodied
online environment.

Caring is a core responsibility for educators if we consider teaching as a moral endeavor (e.g.,
Goodlad et al., 1990; Hansen, 2001; Noddings, 2002a). In care ethics, relationships are
considered the impetus and medium for moral learning (Noddings, 2002a). An innate desire
to be in caring relationships motivates our learning to relate with care. In recent years,
researchers have begun to explore the possibilities for care ethics in the online environment
(e.g., Mastel-Smith et al., 2015; Robinson et al., 2020, 2017; Swartz et al., 2018; Velasquez et al.,
2013). The isolation, automation, and standardization of online learning diminish opportu­
nities for the caring encounters that are central to care ethics (Damarin, 1994; Kostogriz,
2012). Care ethics has been both curriculum and research focus for me as a teacher educator
(Rabin, 2019); In this three-year self-study, I explored my efforts to prioritize care ethics in
online instruction, which became particularly relevant as the 2020 pandemic pushed all
instruction online. Cutri and Whiting (2018) metaphorical train had arrived:
(T)eaching with technology in higher education is a train coming down the track straight
for us general teacher educators regardless of our content areas. Our choice is to either
be run over by that train, or to establish a position for ourselves on that train and make
that position as true to our content area concerns and learning theory commitments as
possible. (p. 126)

Conceptual Framework and Background

Care Ethics in Education
An ethic of care developed in opposition to a traditional ethics focused on abstract norms
and duties in which an autonomous rational agent strives for a pure expression of norms

CONTACT Colette Rabin colette.rabin@sjsu.edu.

© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 STUDYING TEACHER EDUCATION 39

through transcending context (Gilligan, 1982; Held, 2006). A care ethicist is an interde­
pendent social agent embedded in a particular situation and positionality. Applied to
education, learning to care is a primary purpose of schooling (Noddings, 2002a).
Reciprocal, responsive, and enduring relationships are recognized as the medium through
which experiences of schooling create habits of mind. ‘We cannot separate means and
ends in education, because the desired result is part of the process, and the process
carries with it the notion of the persons undergoing it becoming somehow “better”’
(Noddings, 1984, p. 174).
Unlike traditional moral education where virtues are taught didactically, care ethics
focuses on experiences of caring as the medium through which we learn to care. Caring-
for entails engrossing oneself in the cared-for’s concerns enough to understand their
experience and undergo motivational displacement to respond to their needs. Noddings
(2002a) approach to moral education centers on open-ended process-oriented experi­
ences: modeling, practice, dialogue, and confirmation. A teacher ‘models’ caring relations,
‘confirms’ an other’s best intentions, and creates opportunities for ‘dialogue,’ and to
‘practice’ caring.
Teacher educators seek to develop candidates’ capacities for caring relationships as
well as dispositions to care (Rector-Aranda, 2019; Sanger & Osguthorpe, 2013; Schussler &
Knarr, 2013). However, teacher education frequently overlooks preparing candidates to
develop caring collaborative relationships with other teachers (Murawski & Dieker, 2013;
Rabin, 2019b; Sanger & Osguthorpe, 2013). Caring teacher relationships could support
collaboration (Aragon, 2003; Hargreaves, 2002; Rabin, 2019b) and contribute to collective
efficacy (Goddard et al., 2004), which is associated with responding to the emotional
labor of teaching and teacher retention (Boe et al., 2008 ; Kostogriz, 2012).

Care Ethics and Self-Study in Teacher Education

Relational teacher education (RTE) is an approach to self-study in teacher education. RTE
theorizes teacher educator self-study practices in relationships with teacher candidates. In
RTE, growth and learning are recognized as relational. In self-study relationships, teacher
educators’ vulnerability and non-judgmental receptivity support the growth of teacher
candidates as curriculum-makers (Kitchen, 2005a, 2005b). A relational teacher educator (1)
understands their own personal practical knowledge (2) to improve their practice in the
context of (3) an understanding of the landscape of teacher learning, (4) respecting and
empathizing with teacher candidates, (5) conveying that respect and empathy to teacher
candidates, and (6) helping the teacher candidate address a problem in a state of (7)
receptivity to growth in relationship.
Research in self-study methodology guided by RTE has illuminated barriers in teacher
educators’ questioning practices necessary to name in order to pave a way toward con­
necting with teacher candidates (Kastberg et al., 2019, 2020; Kitchen, 2008). The imperative
to improve one’s own practice central to RTE supported teacher-educator Trout’s (2018)
learning related to the costs that her students of color bore when she had not yet examined
her racial identity in order to truly care. Trout found that caring required a reckoning with
her own racial identity to connect across differences with teacher candidates.
40 C. RABIN

Critical Care Ethics

Care ethic’s initial framing was critiqued for not explicating sociocultural context as
morally salient and for the uncritical whiteness of its stories (Barnes, 2018; Valenzuela,
1999). Valenzuela (1999) distinguished authentic from aesthetic caring. Aesthetic caring
focuses narrowly on the teacher–student(s) relationships in a school context as
a fetishistic focus on institutions as holders of learning and knowledge, whereas authentic
caring transcends this limitation to embrace culture and community. Valenzuela’s authen­
tic caring requires transcending a false veneer of neutrality and equality to affirm stu­
dents’ cultural, racial, and community identities and further their well-being beyond
narrowly conceived academic achievement. Critical authentic care requires transcending
assimilationist and deficit-oriented approaches to care.

Relationships in Online Education

On first glance, the automation and standardization characterized by the online environ­
ment is antithetical to caring. Interactive opportunities are limited for practicing caring,
particularly authentic caring, which highlights narrowly focused aims of schooling and the
need for connections to community and culture. Further, caring-for was originally con­
ceived of as a face-to-face matter (Noddings, 1984) and thus arguably impossible in the
online environment.
The primacy of affective labour in teaching is associated with the creation and modulation of
affect in and through human contact, ethics of responsibility, and communication. This
labour is situated in proximal, face-to-face contact zones where teachers and students
experience teaching and learning as an essentially corporeal and affective social activity.
(Kostogriz, 2012, p. 402)

Despite concern over limited interactions in relationship in an online environment, online

teaching became an exigency in my program. As a teacher educator for whom care ethics
has been course curriculum and a research focus, I was interested in operationalizing
a care ethic online as a subset of Whitehead’s (2000) question, ‘How do I live my values
more fully in practice?’ (p. 90).
For decades, scholars have researched the problem of isolation in online learning and
how to develop relationships to address the psychological and physical distances that
impede learning (Short et al., 1976). Tu (2000) defines social presence as ‘the degree of
person-to-person awareness’ (p. 1662). Social presence research differs from care ethics in
that in care ethics the quality of the relationship is morally salient. Social presence
research informs inquiries into care ethics since it helps us understand the relational
dimensions of online teaching. As such, initial case studies conducted on care ethics in
online instruction reference social presence theory (Mastel-Smith et al., 2015; Robinson
et al., 2020, 2017; Swartz et al., 2018; Velasquez et al., 2013).
Social presence theory focuses on reducing the psychological impact of physical
distance in virtual environments through presence and immediacy. Salient interpersonal
relationships increase engagement and participation in learning (Tu, 2000; Rovai &
Wighting, 2005). Research examining efforts to cultivate social presence has shown that
instructor vulnerability, promptness, humor, and eagerness contributed to increased
student interactions, motivation, engagement, and better learning outcomes (see, for
 STUDYING TEACHER EDUCATION 41

example: Aragon, 2003; Du et al., 2005; Tu, 2000). Social presence can be cultivated in the
online realm through whole and particularly small group discussion where students
interact frequently to share opinions and contribute to each other’s learning (Akcaoglu
& Lee, 2016; Knapp, 2018). Specific applications of online discussion, such as sharing
through peer blogs, video conference, or groupwork have been found successful in
cultivating social presence (Akcaoglu & Lee, 2016; Knapp, 2018).

Self-Studies in Online Education

Self-studies on online education and social presence were of particular interest given
their alignment with the methods of this study, but also given that in general self-study
arguably facilitates depth of inquiry into the particularity of a phenomenon. For
example, Dunn and Rice (2019) found they needed to not only encourage, acknowl­
edge, and reinforce students’ contributions to online discussions, but also that they
needed to include specific prompts to share personal stories related to course content
to cultivate social presence. They also noted the lack of support for teacher educators as
they face the transition to teaching remotely and the lack of opportunities for dialogue
over the process of online instruction among their own colleagues. Cutri and Whiting
(2018) also noted a lack of support and they found that self-study helped them to
transcend technology for technology’s sake, to lean into the tensions between their
own authentic learning aims and the directions of external mandates. Likewise, in
empowering instructor choice, Robinson et al. (2017) found that online education
served as a mediator between the instructor and the students; thus, the iterative nature
of self-study became critical toward their being able to make intentional design
decisions.
Despite educators’ desire to operationalize social presence, time constraints and
instructional demands frequently took precedence (Berry, 2019; Dunn & Rice, 2019).
Theoretically, care ethics frees educators from this tension, since care is both means
and ends of education.

Care Ethics in Online Education

There is limited research on care ethics in online education, yet several case studies and
one theoretical exploration stand out. With the advent of the Internet Boom of the
nineties, Damarin (1994) explored the theoretical application of caring to online design.
Damarin argued the need to interrupt the automation that removes face-to-face encoun­
ters from the equation. Teaching online would necessitate drawing on aspects of stu­
dents’ identity, such as cultural artifacts to represent their narratives. Instructors would
design affordances for freedom and interest:

For use by ones-caring, designer/developers could provide numerous material resources;

these must be particular in their intent to convey a message to an interested user rather than
normative. In recognition of the obligation of the cared-for to continue the caring relation
through acknowledgement, designers might also turn their attention to the provision of
multiple opportunities for the one-cared-for to express learnings and to exercise the practice
of free thinking. (Damarin, 1994, p. 37)
42 C. RABIN

Interrupting the automation at the heart of online teaching would make way for ‘free
thinking’ towards connection and ultimately, care.
Several notable case studies have explored instructor and student perceptions of
caring in online learning (Mastel-Smith et al., 2015; Robinson et al., 2020; Swartz et al.,
2018; Velasquez et al., 2013). The findings mirror social presence research, but also reveal
aspects of relationship in online environments that could go overlooked without the
lenses of care ethics. Aligned with social presence, a plethora of pedagogical choices were
perceived as caring: synchronous activities; peer-to-peer support through groupwork;
projects drawing on students’ interests; options for representing learning; solicitation of
student feedback; and, relevant and simplified resources (Robinson et al., 2020, 2017;
Velasquez et al., 2013). Students perceived instructors as caring when they appeared
observant; responded in timely personalized ways; reflected awareness of their tone in
communications; affirmed students’ abilities; and included multiple discussion fora
(Robinson et al., 2020, 2020; Velasquez et al., 2013).
The lenses of care ethics revealed dimensions of relating online through modeling,
confirmation, reciprocity, and tensions between caring, paternalism, and patronization.
When instructors demonstrated flexibility, welcomed revisions, and softened deadlines,
students described experiencing confirmation, the assumption of good intentions
(Robinson et al., 2020; Velasquez et al., 2013). Caring was also perceived when instructors
transcended niceties to provide constructive feedback, repudiate and remind students of
boundaries (Robinson et al., 2020). This touches on how a care ethics perspective reveals
the moral qualities of relationships and harkens to early research on caring as ‘more than
gentle smiles and warm hugs’ (Goldstein, 2009, p. 259); care defined within an ethic differs
from the quotidian connotation of the term, caring, as a warm fuzzy static female
personality trait (Rabin & Smith, 2013).
Caring was also perceived as requiring reciprocity, reflecting Noddings (1984) philoso­
phical conception of caring (Mastel-Smith et al., 2015; Velasquez et al., 2013). Students
pointed to not only instructors’ modeling promptness necessary for social presence, but
also highlighted the salience of instructors’ disclosure, freedom from judgment, willing­
ness to give the benefit of the doubt, and eagerness to connect (Mastel-Smith et al., 2015;
Velasquez et al., 2013). Velasquez et al. (2013) noticed a virtuous circle: factors of caring
interrelated and served to create a repeated cycle in which the instructor gained under­
standing from students’ feedback and executed actions students perceived as caring.
Witnessing students’ growth reenergized the instructor to continue caring.
In a case study exploring the tension between caring and paternalism in online teaching
during a crisis, Swartz et al. (2018) decided to continue teaching their courses remotely during
South Africa’s 2016 student protests over access to higher education. They analyzed their
unilateral assertion of authority during a crisis in the distanced context of online teaching and
in retrospect they questioned whether their actions were caring. They emphasized the
importance of balancing power with involvement of all stakeholders. In the online environ­
ment during a crisis this balance was elusive, and Swartz et al. (2019) assert the nature of
care – in contrast with a norm – as an ideal we can never perfectly achieve: ‘(C)are is not
something that we can ever achieve, but that we can strive towards, allows us breathing
space in our attempts as providing the best care possible to our students and us . . . ’ (p. 61).
As an ideal, caring is aspirational and cannot be predetermined; issues of power in the
dispersed online environment make understanding the cared-for’s needs complex.
 STUDYING TEACHER EDUCATION 43

Methodology
In this self-study in one multiple-subject joint credential/MA program at a large public state
university, over the course of six iterations and seven courses (one semester I taught two
sections), I sought to understand the prioritization of care ethics in a fully online course
with both asynchronous and synchronous activities. Care ethics was course content in our
teacher preparation program; thus, the tension between instructional demands and care
was resolved (Berry, 2019). Quotidian definitions of caring are diffuse compared to the
term, care, within an ethic. With care ethics as curriculum, my teacher candidates -students
were uniquely situated to critique its implementation (Rabin & Smith, 2013). I drew on
LaBoskey’s (2004) characteristics of self-study as self-initiated, self-focused, improvement-
aimed, interactive, drawing on multiple qualitative methods, and demonstrating validity
through trustworthiness (Michler, 1990). Further, Kitchen’s conceptualization of relational
teacher education (RTE) illuminated the imperative of relationships with teacher candidates
as critical from a methodological standpoint in this study (Kitchen, 2005b). I aimed to be
receptive to learning from my teacher candidates’ perspectives how (and if) I could design
in the online environment for care. This appeared implausible but imperative to me to ‘live
my values more fully in my practice’ (Whitehead, 2000, p. 90).

Context and Participants

Over the course of six semesters, seven cohorts of multiple-subject teaching credential
candidates enrolled in one fully online course, Health and Special Education. Of the 203
candidates (average 29 per course), a third had taken Sociology of Education with me or
another instructor; here candidates encountered care ethics by discussing Noddings’
seminal work, Caring, and intersections of care, culture, and racial context, in
Valenzuela’s Subtractive Schooling. Candidates explored care ethics in practice through
ethical dilemma cases from Richert’s (2012) What Should I Do?. They composed their own
cases and discussed them in a conference format (Rabin, 2019). In the health and special
education course, care ethics was integrated through cases related to caring-for students;
inclusion; diverse ways of knowing; interrupting deficit mindsets; de-centering neurotypi­
cality (Fernandes, 2019); physical and mental health; and caring-for teachers given the
emotional labor of teaching (Kostogriz, 2012). I referred to participants by pseudonyms
when I reference interviews; other data was anonymized.

Data Collection
Data collection was iterative; I implemented changes in my teaching each semester based
on what I learned with teacher candidates (LaBoskey, 2004). Data included (1) candidates’
written reflections over their learning, (2) student work, (3) video-ed synchronous class
sessions, (4) my reflective notes and course materials, (5) four periodic surveys of all
candidates per semester, and (6) self-nominated candidate interviews (see Appendix A for
survey/interview protocol). Given my own subjectivity and position of power,
I interviewed any willing teacher candidates only after they’d completed my courses
and assessments were finalized, engaged them in member-checking, offered group or
solo interviews, and explicitly requested their critiques. I opened interviews with a request
44 C. RABIN

for ‘brutal honesty’ to help me improve my practice. To reflect the focus on relationships
and dialogue, I offered candidates the choice to interview in groups of 3–4 and only 5
candidates interviewed solo. Early on, I found that candidates critiqued my practice more
freely in a group interview and so I continued this practice throughout the study. 108
candidates interviewed in groups (~5 interviews per semester, 28 group and 5 solo
interviews).

Analysis
At each analytic phase, I took a grounded theory approach (Merriam, 1998/2007) and also
employed a priori interpretive categories within care ethics: caring, modeling, practice,
dialogue, and confirmation. I examined the data sets at the end-of-each-semester.
I conducted inductive interpretive coding to identify emergent themes, highlighting
phrases, sentences, and longer excerpts. By the end-of-the-first-year onward, I engaged
candidates in member-checking initial interpretations of themes gleaned thus far. Since
they were learning teacher inquiry methods as part of their joint credential-masters
research project, they had preparation to serve as critical friends. I shared that I was
seeking to complicate my interpretations.

Findings
In online teaching, teacher candidates experienced subjectivity to my course design and
heightened teacher power. Care was perceived when modeling through story-telling and
authenticity required continuity. Caring collaborations required dialogic pedagogies and
de-centering grading. Ultimately, caring was cumulative and idiosyncratic.

Caring as Cumulative and Idiosyncratic

While candidates did associate specific pedagogies with care, they also noticed ‘all the
little things altogether.’ Perceptions of caring accumulated and relied on idiosyncratic
scenarios like the following, in Freya’s interview:

I don’t know if there’s anything you could do (to cultivate caring). You asked us how we were,
told us how you were, tied this to coursework, had a reassuring demeaner, gave feedback on
every revision, emailed us even on the weekend. I got the feeling over time that you actually
cared about us . . . . Nothing alone would do authenticity. One thing did stick out . . . when the
tech person helped. He apologized for interrupting class. You said something like, ‘Are you
kidding? We wouldn’t get to do anything without your help and your time and thank you.’
I was like, okay she cares. It wasn’t lost on me that you were a White instructor in a position of
power.

Freya shows how a sense of instructor caring developed over time and how it could be
undermined. Stand-alone efforts to care seem saccharin and inauthentic, arguably more
so in the distanced online environment.
 STUDYING TEACHER EDUCATION 45

Decontextualized Relationships Emphasize Teacher Power

Throughout this study, the lenses of care ethics highlighted the decontextualized nature
of relating in the online environment; context is what’s needed to care and in contrast
to the reciprocity of caring, the distances between us emphasized my power as the
teacher. The candidates described how online interactions were ‘higher-stakes,’ ‘rigid,’
and ‘more formal somehow’ and this could foreclose developing caring relationships. In
a group interview, Amber, who I’d taught face-to-face in my other (sociology) course,
said, ‘I knew you are not at all intimidating. But when we went online and I watched
your videos I had to remind myself I knew you and try not to be intimidated by you.’
Across my two-dozen years of teaching evaluations, I am not referred to as intimidating;
instead, I am described as ‘warm’ and actually, perhaps because I teach and try to
practice care ethics, ‘caring.’ Rose added, ‘Yeah, it’s like we don’t get the feeling with the
complex ideas.’ Unsurprisingly, the impersonal disembodied online environment dis­
tanced us.
This heightened candidates’ vulnerability to my pedagogical choices. In interviews,
candidates shared their experiences of online learning and let me glimpse a window into
how online teaching could be experienced from candidates’ perspectives as intractable.
Lola described the beginning of our online course: ‘There’s just more infrastructure to get
through that has to be all teacher-centered stuff.’ A theme throughout these stories was
their subjectivity to my pedagogical decisions. Lola said:

You are more vulnerable to the teacher’s ways of teaching because maybe in person you
could check out a bit and get caught up by peers or you can interact and casually ask to do
something another way but online you must figure it all out . . . That stuff you made can be
great but still, it’s definitely teacher-centered at first.”

Online instruction can be rigid and teacher-centered, especially perhaps when setting up
procedures, developing relationships, and orienting students to a course; Lola leaves an
opening for reciprocity to develop when she ends with, ‘at first . . . .’ Given the initial
default power-down experience of online learning, what pedagogies, if any, interrupt this
power dynamic toward reciprocity and care?

Authentic Modeling
Throughout this study, I focused on humanizing pedagogies to cultivate caring in the
online environment through authentic modeling; teacher candidates described some of
these practices as caring and they also named their limits. ‘To be effective it (modeling)
must be genuine . . . Modeling may be more effective in the moral domain than in the
intellectual because its very authenticity is morally significant’ (Noddings, 2002b, p. 287).
In Kitchen’s research guided by his framework of RTE, authenticity meant letting go of his
research aims to focus on veteran teacher Fitzgerald’s development (Kitchen, 2005a); and,
in relationship with Kitchen’s teacher candidates, he found that authenticity was con­
veyed in an introductory letter to them (Kitchen, 2005b). In this context of online teaching,
I had to discover what authenticity might mean to these teacher candidates.
I began class synchronous or asynchronous sessions by modeling authenticity through
sharing stories of my own experiences (mostly teaching) and candidates frequently noted
46 C. RABIN

this as legitimizing the relevance of the whole person: ‘You showed us that we mattered,
our experience mattered, when you’d start with the stories in each class and then your
narrative paper. It’s like, I’m a human before I’m an authority here.’ This candidate refers to
a reflection I wrote to provide the context that was missing online – on my own schooling
experiences and how they intersect with race, class, gender, and sexuality (the classic
educational sociology autobiography that I assign) and despite this being optional read­
ing in a reading heavy program, candidates often referenced this. Modeling authenticity
through sharing aspects of my identity seemed especially important in the distanced
online environment. In surveys, candidates wrote that online interactions required ‘more
of you’ and ‘breaking through’; ‘Anything personal helps but it has to be authentic.’
I thought we would need to share deeply – that I could transcend aesthetic caring by
focusing on contextualizing ourselves in our stories and candidates confirmed this. In an
interview, Peter said:

We are more likely to truly share when you have modeled doing it in a real way. Then we did
it. Without sharing our situations there is no way we can support each other because we
wouldn’t know how. That said, I wasn’t going to share anything until I saw it was invited and
you did. You didn’t just tell us to. That would have been canned.

I began synchronous class meetings and designed activities with introductions focused
on sharing our stories; for example, I shared about the challenge of teaching online (or the
pandemic) and candidates could reciprocate anonymously (in word clouds, for example).
Introductions ranged from setting norms for dialogue to sharing about our identities
guided by questions, such as: ‘What’s your earliest memory?’; ‘Share a family story about
your name.’; ‘Share a time you felt excluded in school.’; ‘How are you?’; and, ‘Describe one
worst and best thing about this course.’ These could be critiqued as formulaic and
predictable and thus not caring within an ethic; yet, in surveys, 190 out of 203 candidates
recalled these as caring. I tried to transcend formulaic superficiality by connecting themes
in candidates’ stories to course concepts, the program’s trajectory, university, and current
events; in the study’s final year, the pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement were
central and our stories included our recognition of our collective losses and the need to
learn to be caring teachers seemed all the more evident.
The repetitiousness of the introductions may have led to their notice, but this candi­
date’s characteristic interview description points to my vulnerability combined with
candidates’ anonymity as relevant toward caring – perhaps particularly given the power
dynamic online, ‘One of the first things that comes to mind about caring was the intros
like the ones with the word clouds about how we were. That felt caring. It was more so
because you’d always share and we could share anonymously and there were options. It
was a bit more on you.’ In her interview, Julia focused on authenticity:

There is no way for emotional and relationship stuff to work unless you as the teacher mean it.
You show it by being who you are and weaving it everywhere, tons of tiny things, like
modeling . . . It would be worse if it was inauthentic. It can’t be authentic unless it acknowl­
edges challenges to manage emotions in general and to care.

While modeling through sharing stories and crafting opportunities for candidates to do so
was often described in surveys as caring in-and-of-itself, in interviews, candidates pointed
 STUDYING TEACHER EDUCATION 47

out that transcending aesthetic caring within an ethical framework requires actions that
can be elusive in an online environment:

With a tone set, we will be nice to each other, but we won’t go far enough to really know each
other, to be present enough to actually care like to help each other to learn. It’s way harder
online. The specific structures that asked us to do that in context helped, like when you
described all the various ways we could work in a group depending on our strengths.

We had the freedom to work that out so we could value each other.

Affordances for caring in the distanced online environment required integration through­
out the learning experiences.

Practice and Continuity

While the reciprocal vulnerability of authenticity through story-telling was perceived as
caring in-and-of-itself, transcending aesthetic caring required integration. I discovered
that in the online environment, when the candidates ‘met’ in breakout rooms to discuss
the readings and engage in dialogue, they didn’t start with ‘off topic’ discussion as they
typically do face-to-face; when I’d drop in, the conversations seemed stilted. I realized I’d
assumed that sharing our stories and how we were doing before breakouts would be
enough to facilitate connection, but connection was hard to find online. This was
especially true during the pandemic when the feelings shared (in wordclouds) were
frequently: ‘overwhelmed’ and ‘fearful.’
I learned to initiate groups by explicitly framing opportunities to care. This reflects
Dunn and Rice (2019) finding in their online teaching; they needed to be explicit in
prompting personalized contributions. One candidate described how without continuity
caring was not possible, ‘A lot of care and emotional-management lessons where you
share your story and say how you’re feeling and how to manage the feeling, feel surface-
level and it’s worse than if feelings were not brought up cause you just feel put off.’
I needed to start discussion with reminders to listen for and operationalize understand­
ings of one another; for example, at the beginning of lesson-planning with Universal
Design for Learning I wrote: ‘Start by: teaching each other one word from your home
language; or, sharing an artifact that represents your family; or describing something you
care about learning today.’ Within care ethics, care is an acknowledged response on
behalf of the cared-for (Noddings, 1984); this requires transcending superficial nods to
caring by acknowledging the context of identity and making way for caring actions (Trout,
2018; Valenzuela, 1999). As a candidate in a survey wrote, ‘If all we do is say we are
stressed, it helps us individually but it’s not enough.’ Aesthetic caring is a lack of
continuity.
Framing activities for candidates’ story-sharing while explicitly naming purposes within
care ethics supported continuity toward authenticity; I asked candidates to name the
challenges they noticed in their dialogue during collaborations, such as imbalances in
participation. For example, as they learned how bias plays out across culture, language,
race, and ability, I prefaced groupwork with prompts to consider how to interrupt these
underlying attitudes toward one another; they could share if they chose, but the focus
was reflection. In her interview, Leah referred to this practice, ‘The learning about bias on
48 C. RABIN

the first day and then the explicit focus on asking us to examine our biases in the moment
in groupwork . . . .so from the start it wasn’t about “nice”; it was deep and it was about
applying what we were learning.’ In their group interview, Sara, Jamie, and Lola com­
mented on the importance of continuity toward transcending aesthetic caring:
Sara: Setting “a nice tone” is not enough. It has to be woven into the class. You did that with
the anonymous share time about feelings and then asking us to consider each other’s
feelings in groupwork in specific things like not judging each other for not turning on the
videocam.

Lola: And that’s all in the context of teaching what care ethics is.

Jamie: And this is critical we notice stuff like this as teachers, like is it our colleagues from
another language or culture that we are judging before figuring out what’s going on.

In the online environment in particular, our needs could be hidden and thus, explicit
structures or gentle reminders to listen to each other for opportunities to care helped.
The data revealed several stories of possibilities for caring. In one reflection on a group
collaboration, Maria shared that she was bilingual. She asked to assume the role of scribe
to practice her English, but only upon explicit agreement from her colleagues to refrain
from judging her notetaking. When I asked her about this experience in her interview, she
questioned if she would have been willing to assume this role without ‘counting on caring
responses’:
I shared how I feared being judged for my writing and in our small groups you gave us the
opportunity to shape the groupwork based on those feelings. I told my group I was bilingual,
English my second language. I’d volunteer to be note-taker but I needed everyone to know
I was working on my writing. I welcomed feedback. It felt like some control of the situation,
like counting on caring responses. Without this, I would never have chosen this role.

Given this candidate’s hesitation to volunteer, if I had not explicitly structured ways to
care, it is less likely that she would assume this leadership role and caring would remain
on an aesthetic level, disconnected from her cultural identity.

Dialogue
Throughout the data, candidates pinpointed the opportunities for dialogue in collabora­
tion as important to cultivate caring in the online environment. As a long-time teacher
focused on care ethics, I have centered dialogue in my teaching; Yet I found that I reacted
to the distances of online learning by leaning on assignments in the form of concrete
tangible products (independent writing instead of slippery-to-capture dialogue). To the
extent I did this, I had confined caring between teacher-and-student. For decades,
dialogue has been taken up as a relational approach to teaching (see Burbules, 1993;
Noddings, 1984, 2002a) and to online teaching in particular toward social presence
(Aragon, 2003; Du et al., 2005). In Burbules (1993) philosophical analysis of dialogue, he
argued that Noddings’ conception of care was an emotional factor necessary for dialogue.
Discourse analysis is beyond this study’s confines, and I do not claim discussions were
dialogic in the sense Burbules defines: pedagogical, communicative, and relational; here,
I refer to my efforts to cultivate dialogue through nonteleological questions to unearth
candidates’ lived experiences and intersecting identities.
 STUDYING TEACHER EDUCATION 49

I limited the freedoms Damarin (1994) suggested decades ago would be necessary to
build caring collaborations in the online environment. Candidates pinpointed dialogic
and collaborative assignments as those that cultivated caring; one wrote in a survey: ‘The
carefully set up groupwork for dialogue, that makes way for caring and learning. Give
students more chances to work together. Also, you should require it.’ Despite the clarity in
reflections like these, it took me another semester to allow myself the breathing space
(Kastberg et al., 2019) to dare to remove the opt-outs of dialogue. I realized that I myself
felt too distanced to care; I wrote in my notes: ‘I will miss or be unable to respond to issues
like uneven participation.’ I questioned the authentic possibilities for caring dialogue,
especially in forced collaborations online. I foreclosed my own research question and
offered options to complete assignments individually. Once more, candidates took me up
on this, completed solo work, and then later expressed bluntly and repeatedly that
providing this option was my mistake – as in this survey comment: ‘The flexibility in this
course with choosing to work alone rather than groups was a poor decision. We would
have dug deeper in the later assignments if we had been told to collaborate and got to
dialogue over those topics.’ Anika connected the necessity of my including collaborative
dialogue to their professional preparation:

We are not just students in this program; we are students becoming teachers. By modeling
that we take the time to dialogue and value it, you teach us to make the time for our own
students to be able to have these opportunities. Otherwise, classroom community and
collaboration is abstract.

The next semester, to be receptive to my candidates’ needs (Kitchen, 2005b), I removed

the opt-outs from discussion-based experiences. I still questioned in my teaching journal,
‘Is it patronizing to require collaboration/dialogue or not to require it? I can try in the
context of self-study because candidates have anonymous opportunities to tell me how
things are really going.’ It became patronizing not to try. Opportunities for dialogue
enrich experiences for learning since multiple perspectives could be included; here
follows an example of how I could frame an activity when I knew all students would
collaborate over one physical education lesson-plan (italicized questions represent
revisions):

Reflect on your experience in PE as a child. Did you hate it? Love it? Why? How were you
included/excluded? Share a story with your colleagues that you think teachers ought to know.
Discuss what you would do as a teacher to improve PE for if you were each other’s teachers. How
can you actively remove barriers to include diverse students?

Essentially, I aligned my teaching with the core assumption within care ethics of our
innate desire to care, for one another and for learning. Yet dialogue – even in a teacher
education context where teacher candidates’ commitments to learn were aligned –
complicates processes and opens opportunities for both more and less caring. I found
I could live with the contradiction of required dialogue if I shared my purposes explicitly
and stayed true to self-study and sought candidates’ perspectives. I shared my purposes
with candidates by describing my reasoning for dialogue – to cultivate caring collabora­
tion. In written and video-ed announcements, I quoted candidates’ critiques of the initial
course design. I also sought to create structures aligned with the aims of these dialogues:
In assignments, I asked candidates to reflect on their dialogue and collaboration.
50 C. RABIN

I mentioned these reflections above (Maria’s story), initiated with questions such as,
‘What’s one dynamic in your collaboration you hope to improve? What’s going well?
Share one aspect of your plan for collaboration in your post.’ One response shows
a candidate’s plan and reasoning: ‘I have noticed what I can learn from other teachers
but I have to come prepped . . . I struggle with that and have scheduled in procrastination
time next week.’ With increased collaboration, even thin group assignments were richer
than typical individual work. I shifted assignments from writing to mini-podcast, screen-
share, or talking-heads videos, so discussion could serve as the product and I could glean
a wider window into their experiences.
Ultimately, I needed to trust candidates’ commitment to learn to collaborate with care
despite the distanced environment. I’ve taught two course iterations with these shifts and
thus far, candidates have not asked to work independently. Also, fewer candidates voted
to change homegroups (83% in the first year to 94% in the final iteration); candidates say
they chose to remain with their groups given the efforts they made to collaborate. Their
commitment to dialogue in collaboration may also be related to my approach to online
assessment.

Assessment and Balancing Power toward Care

Assessment was a foundational undercurrent of power dynamics in relationships online.
In an interview in response to, ‘What gets in the way of caring in this course?’, Laura
mentioned that without addressing hierarchical dynamics in evaluation, caring is less
likely. Two other interviewees enthusiastically chimed in with stories of the lack of care in
online assessments. ‘Once I didn’t get feedback and a grade in a reasonable amount of
time. Like, I waited all semester. It makes you feel . . . helpless.’ Another said: ‘And it’s worse
for being online for your utter lack of agency.’ After these interviews, I added the question,
‘How does caring manifest, if it does or not, in your experience of assessment?’
Interestingly, only twice did assessment arise (and this includes the first time); This
reticence reflects the power dynamics at play, which candidates described as salient in
the online environment: deeply socialized power dynamics might make it difficult to
name, especially to me as the instructor. In my prior research on caring in collegial
relationships, I found that power dynamics in teacher candidates’ relationships needed
to be articulated and addressed (Rabin, 2019b). In online teaching in particular, I realized
how I assume collaborations were successful or even caring if students withheld their
concerns to appear collaborative.
Candidates didn’t critique my grading per se, which was portfolio and self-
assessment based, but they illuminated how assessment got in the way of their relation­
ship with me and their developing caring collaborations. Emma said: ‘You know, it’s
always true, I mean in school, but there’s a bottom line and that’s you grade us. I waited
to see if the grading statement was really the case.’ In terms of groupwork, Monique’s
characteristic critique follows: ‘It’s a set up to not get along because you alone get
a grade so you have a worry that the other person won’t help or will freeload, so how
will you get them to work and so on.’ The online environment heightened these
dynamics; Katya said:
 STUDYING TEACHER EDUCATION 51

It’s much scarier to submit work online; there’s even more a sense of loss of control. You can’t
say anything to the professor like I was up all night. I threw away 3 drafts. If you write that you
make a big deal. So you don’t say anything, just press submit, and you see the letters, LATE in
red, if you’re 2 minutes past the due date.

Survey comments also revealed the power dynamics in mechanized grading, which could
exacerbate concerns for groupwork and undermine trust, ‘There’s an awareness of the
possibility of rigidity, like quizzes that grade you mechanically.’
Diminishing the visibility and impact of grades made way for a focus on learning in
relationship. Along with a classic ‘virtual walk around the course,’ I created a video-ed (and
transcribed) ‘grading statement’ summarizing research on the impact of focusing on
grades (Kohn, 2011). An excerpt follows: ‘I’ll take on responsibility for chasing after missing
members and accountability complications of groupwork; during groupwork assessment
will be formative to free you to focus on learning; feedback will be public and in video
format; any coursework can be revised till all are satisfied; and, you will self-assess; when
our assessments differ, we’ll meet to chat about it.’ In the longer version, I included quotes
from graduates’ interview data, such as formative groupwork assessment to interrupt the
‘set up to not get along.’
Candidates repeatedly mentioned the video feedback as caring on my part. As in this
survey comment, 83% of candidates mentioned video feedback consistently positively:
‘There’s nothing I’ve experienced in grading that makes it work as well as the videos. From
the beginning you get the feeling that the instructor is thinking with you and that orients
you to the ideas.’ In their coursework at the end of a podcast, one group chatted about
their video-ed assessment:
Victoria: For me the video took intimidation out of assessment, turned it into dialogue. That
she would take time to make the video just for us.

Sara: Yeah, it felt like she cared about it, you know? My heart just drops when I receive
feedback in written form. The video felt like so much less pressure.

Nancy: I totally agree. It’s like with the tone it lets you breathe and know the feeling behind
the words is caring, not like you are being judged.

Assessment as an Opportunity for Confirmation

Reflective of prior case study findings on caring in online teaching, candidates noted
assessment as a site for confirmation (Robinson et al., 2020; Velasquez et al., 2013).
Confirmation entails acknowledging the cared-for’s underlying best intentions when their
actions are less than admirable. ‘Here is this significant and percipient other who sees
through the smallness or meanness of my present behavior a self that is better and a real
possibility’ (Noddings, 2005, p. 25). Confirmation is particularly important within an inter­
dependent morality. Noddings (2006) associates the neglect of confirmation in moral philo­
sophy with the ‘traditional unwillingness to recognize moral interdependence’ (p. 114). Moral
interdependence is the idea that I can only be as good as you allow me to be. To confirm, we
look beyond the external actions into underlying struggles and structures at play.
While candidates did not mention self-assessment except to grumble about the extra
step it required, it would have been difficult if not impossible for me to get to know my
52 C. RABIN

teacher candidates well enough in the online context to ascertain their ‘best intentions’ or
to cultivate the reciprocity this candidate refers to with the ‘they and you’ as opposed to
just a teacher here:
I learned that grading can affirm students . . . . by respecting us enough to ask to take our
thinking further and help do that. The grade goes up if “they and you” think it should.

Through the lens of confirmation, assessment provided an opportunity to relate to

candidates’ deeper inclinations to learn; this orientation surprised candidates and
Serena, like many, said she had to learn to trust it:
Of course, I waited to see if you would dock grades publicly. The grading reflected confirma­
tion in care ethics. If you know you’ll get really good feedback you struggle with the difficult
concepts because you’ll be able to improve.

As Sam put it, ‘I stopped thinking about the numbers associated with my submission and
began to notice how awesome our lesson plan was becoming with all the feedback and
everything I was learning.’
Candidates also said that confirmation through assessment could support their caring
collaborations. Assessment was no longer a ‘set up to not get along’ but a structure that
supported a moral ecology. Michael described how downplaying grading in groupwork
afforded them the chance to focus on their relationships:
The hugest thing was you putting into perspective not judging each other, remembering we
do not know what others are going thru, not our role to judge them, but to encourage
contribution, we knew we could let you do the communication if it’s not working and that
helped us to focus on valuing effort.

When candidates didn’t have to worry about failing a course due to another’s actions –
because they were able to explain the situation in self-assessments and I chased after
errant members – they were freer to confirm one another’s best intentions; interestingly,
I had minimal chasing to do. Another candidate described applying her learning about
bias and ‘keeping an open mind’ toward her colleagues in groupwork:
The (course) content addresses acknowledging our biases . . . the self-discovery work at the
beginning so we look at how if we value perfectionism it color show we look at each other,
what each person has to offer. That was really important. If you keep an open mind about
a person when we don’t truly know what’s going on with them they surprise you. That
happened to me. The statement about remembering when we encourage our colleagues and
value their contribution that is us learning, too. That’s learning to be a teacher.

With grading a minimal focus and self-assessment accounted for, candidates may have
been freer to care-for each other.

Implications and Conclusion

This study expands the application of care ethics within the context of the estrange­
ment of online teaching from the perspectives of teacher candidates who were familiar
with – and thus poised to analyze my pedagogy from – a care ethics perspective.
Authentic care within care ethics differs from quotidian niceties and requires respon­
siveness that the cared-for perceives as meeting their needs and cultivating reciprocity
 STUDYING TEACHER EDUCATION 53

and connection. Caring in the online environment highlighted rigidities in the teacher–
student hierarchy and was perceived as manifest in cumulative experiences of (1)
modeling authentic caring, (2) continuity, (3) dialogue and collaboration, and (4) cen­
tering self-assessment.
Throughout this study, self-study methods uncovered my assumptions as a long-time
teacher and researcher in care ethics. Without the systematic, self-focused, and improve­
ment-aims of self-study, I could have assumed thin independent coursework was an
unavoidable consequence of restrictions of digitization. I assumed candidates would
perceive me relatively the same as they had face-to-face. An outgoing and vocal candi­
date informed me that I intimidated her online; I can only imagine how diffident students
might experience my online presence without my having found that I needed to make
explicit efforts to model authenticity and weave opportunities for candidates to do so
throughout their collaborations. Focusing on authenticity helped to transcend aesthetic
caring, a veneer of neutrality and equality; without candidates’ background in care ethics,
they may have been more liberal in deeming pedagogies caring and the findings here
might have reflected social presence. Toward practicing authentic caring, I learned that
I needed to explicitly share my own reflection on my educational experiences as they
intersected with my race, class, and gender and to include relationship-focused prompts
for groupwork so candidates had the impetus to practice caring.
I learned to afford myself the breathing room to be receptive to my teacher candidates’
perspectives and infuse dialogue and collaboration despite my own distanced role
(Kitchen, 2005b). Dialogic collaborative pedagogies in the online environment led to
deeper thinking and a moral ecology. While fostering caring collaboration in an online
(or any) course may be tied to caring teacher–student relationships, it is critical for teacher
preparation to not overlook cultivating caring collaborations between candidates; teacher
education must prepare teachers to create communities of learning and collective efficacy
(Goddard et al., 2004). Programs and the courses within in them are always pressed for
time, and caring between teacher candidates is often disregarded in teacher education for
care ethics (Murawski & Dieker, 2013; Rabin, 2019b; Sanger & Osguthorpe, 2013). The
possibilities that downplaying assessment while drawing on self-assessment opened for
caring collaboration in the online space is promising for preparing teachers who under­
stand the value of professional relationships and can interrupt the isolation associated
with high attrition rates. As one candidate put it in a survey: ‘The most important thing
I learned in this course was how and why to collaborate with teachers.’
Over the course of this three-year study, the promise of self-study for teacher-
educators to live our ‘values more fully in practice’ (Whitehead, 2000, p. 90) seems
particularly critical to practicing care ethics because caring is idiosyncratic and sensitive
to the individual across differences of culture, race, age, and all that divides and distin­
guishes each cared-for in each situation (Barnes, 2018; Noddings, 1984; Valenzuela, 1999).
The boundaries to caring in the online context manifest in a multitude of invisible forms in
each teaching context; differences of age, culture, experience, race, etc., contribute to
discontinuities for care. The unforgiving nature of online interactions clarifies the efforts
educators always need to make to learn what cultivates a caring environment for each
individual in each case. Since relational aims like caring are elusive in any realm, it is likely
they’ll fall by the wayside without self-study practices.
54 C. RABIN

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Appendix A: Interview/Survey Protocol

Introduction: When I refer to the term, care, I am referencing care ethics. I’m seeking brutal honesty
to improve my teaching – just like you in your teacher-inquiry Masters projects:

● What gets in the way of caring in the online environment of this course? What supports caring, if
anything does?
● How does caring manifest, or not, in your experience of assessment, curriculum, and teaching?
● Describe your experience with relationships in online instruction.